Jo-ey Tang has spent much of his adult life making, or showcasing, works of art.

A one-time photo editor for several national magazines, he later pursued careers as both an artist — specializing in installations and sculptures — and a curator, working at the Palais de Tokyo art center in Paris and other venues.

Yet Tang, hired last year as the director of exhibitions at the Columbus College of Art & Design’s Beeler Gallery, wasn't always so immersed in art.

Growing up in Oakland, California, the Hong Kong native moved through the public-school system with little exposure to high culture.

"We never were brought to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,” said Tang, who turned 40 on Sunday.

As an undergraduate student at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, however, Tang made the 45-minute drive to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where his eyes were opened to contemporary art.

“It was an exhibition of young British artists,” he said. “I remember not knowing what I was seeing or knowing how to interpret what I was seeing, and that made a really strong impression on me.”

Tang was hooked. After three years at Carleton, he transferred to the San Francisco Art Institue, embarking on a career in art.

At CCAD, he plans to present exhibits featuring major and emerging artists that he hopes prove equally fascinating or inspiring to present-day students and other visitors who pass through the gallery doors.

“I would love for someone from high school or younger to have that experience,” he said. “To me, that would be a dream ... to activate that kind of love for culture and art.”

The first show curated by Tang is a survey of printed matter, from fashion-show invitations to posters advertising art exhibits. “How Well Do You Behave? In The Flat Field” opened Feb. 1 and continues through March 25.

The show is rooted in his interest in printed material. After graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2001, he moved to New York to work in magazine publishing, a goal since his youth.

"I’ve always liked and was attracted to the printed image and page," said Tang, who was a photo editor with the mass-media company Conde Nast and an arts editor at the literary publication N+1.

After earning a master’s degree in fine arts from New York University in 2011, Tang relocated that same year to Paris. There, he worked as a curator at the Palais de Tokyo and then had a residency as a researcher at Villa Arson, an art school in Nice — the latter a prelude of sorts to his position at the Beeler Gallery.

“My re-entry into the art-school context was actually living in the school — beautiful, brutalist southern France architecture,” Tang said.

CCAD President Melanie Corn said Tang was among 40-plus applicants for the position — last held by Michael Goodson, from 2011 to 2016. A five-person search committee chose three finalists for in-person interviews.

Appealing about Tang, Corn said, was his diverse background — “the fact that he had experience in a number of different types of venues ... but also doing programming and working for arts publications.”

"Student artists ... really learn more from looking at art than any other experience," professor Tim Rietenbach said. "Having (a gallery) on campus, and having it being a rigorous and vital version of that, has been really terrific. ... They don't have to walk but 100 feet from their class to go see whatever's going on there at the time."

Many students work in that gallery during their time at CCAD, he added, learning valuable skills such as exhibit installation.

Among the ideas that Tang plans to introduce to the gallery is “slow programming” — or fewer exhibits per year and flexibility within exhibits, he said.

For example, pieces of art might be removed or added during a given exhibit — so that viewers who attended an opening might return weeks or months later to find that the show has evolved. In the past, whole exhibits changed with greater frequency.

“I think this process of something forming, something active and ongoing, (is) really needed in our culture at this moment, where things have a tendency to be very well-defined,” said Tang, who moved to Columbus in August and lives in the Victorian Village neighborhood.

“That process, I’m hoping, will be inspiring to the students who are also working and thinking long term. ... This idea of allowing oneself to just explore, engage and not have to produce immediate, quick responses.”

Tang also plans to host events in the gallery — including conversations with artists, which have typically taken place in an auditorium. One example he cited is the art book fair that will take place Feb. 24-25 among the new exhibit.

He envisions the gallery as “a space where students and visitors can hang out and read and think of the space as a kind of art center.”

Goodson, who left the Beeler Gallery to become the senior curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts, praised his successor’s plan for “slowing down the way we consume art.”

“It’s one way to think about doing this,” he said. “I think it’ll be a challenge, actually, for some of the CCAD students who to this point have had a constant flow that’s more typical for that kind of space.”

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